Argentina's unemployed

Pickets unfenced

The jobless prove a political headache

TWO years ago on December 20th, popular unrest forced the resignation of President Fernando de la Rua, and ushered in Argentina's traumatic devaluation and debt default. The economy is now on the mend. But for many residents of Buenos Aires, the anniversary will be significant mainly for the difficulty of trying to cross town. Three separate groups of piqueteros—jobless protesters from the metropolitan rust belt—plan to block the city centre.

The protesters, who survive on government welfare payments of just over $50 a month, have become a fixture. They are a handy excuse for lateness, and material for moans by taxi drivers. They are also a headache for Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner.

Two years ago, they attracted widespread sympathy in an angry nation. No longer. Most Argentines are now fed up with the disruption caused by the protests. Polls in hand, Mr Kirchner last week attacked the piqueteros for the first time, accusing them of “setting Argentines against Argentines, because the roadblocks often affect those who work.”

But the president is treading carefully. There is no public appetite for repression. Mr Kirchner's predecessor, Eduardo Duhalde, felt obliged to cut short his term of office and call elections after police killed two demonstrators in June 2002.

The origins of the piquetero movement lie in the arrival of mass unemployment, for the first time in modern Argentina, in the mid-1990s. The state oil company laid off thousands of workers prior to its privatisation. Many lived in small towns in remote provinces, such as Neuquén and Salta; there, blocking the roads was the only way of getting the country's attention, says José Nun, a political scientist.

Unfortunately, the piqueteros will be around for a while. Though unemployment has fallen from its 2002 peak, it stood at 16% last May. The latest figure, which was to be released on December 18th, was not expected to show much of a drop, partly because of changes in the way it is calculated. The jobless do not officially include the 2.2m Argentines receiving welfare payments.

For now, Mr Kirchner is trying to divide and rule the protesters. Mr Duhalde's government outsourced the administration of part of its emergency welfare scheme to the piquetero leaders. The government accuses some of them of using the money to buy support for extreme-left politics. It is trying to isolate these hardliners. But according to Maristela Svampa, a sociologist at San Martín University, only a tenth of the payments are now run by the piqueteros, with most of the rest administered by local leaders of Mr Kirchner's own Peronist party. Like the leftists, the Peronists use the programme to buy political loyalty.

The bold option would be to turn a discretionary and politicised welfare programme into a state-run scheme, open to all who are genuinely unemployed. Instead, the government seems to hope that time and patience will heal. According to the Centro de Estudios para la Nueva Mayoría, a Buenos Aires political consultancy, this year piquetero roadblocks averaged 104 per month, down by almost half compared with 2002. But for months yet, Argentine taxi drivers will not be short of things to whinge about.